her eyes and tried to sleep as the flight lifted off through clouded San Francisco skies and headed north, but the shudders of the plane and her own worries prevented it. She could feel Paul’s presence like a shadow, and she almost wished she’d decided not to board. Her father hadn’t wanted her to accompany the heart. Not necessary, he’d said. Fly ahead and meet it on the other end.
But her father was down to his last days, the Berlin Heart his only option; and the past year, he’d been so stricken that he barely worked or accepted comfort from her. She had little to give anyway. She understood about his torn ventricle and the patched aorta that could not be permanently repaired. But it was not those things alone that put Bruce Lambert a hairbreadth from death. It was grief and the helplessness of a powerful man who realized he could not buy back a single moment of the past. Doctors were surprised he’d survived this far.
Only one thing kept him alive and able to put his plans into action. It wasn’t physical or emotional healing. Not coming to terms with the loss. Something darker and infinitely cold.
He might not achieve peace, but he would have his revenge on Wrigley, on the hospital. She swallowed. On Paul. She’d heard him rant. Not enough doctors on duty. Wrigley unable to be located when he should have been supervising the emergency room. Paul’s inability or unwillingness to save the children.
She made herself remember. Paul had managed to save his brother, his blood, at the expense of the kids. She’d heard her father say it time and time again, but there was some tiny part, some deep-down whisper in her heart that wondered.
The desire for revenge was the only thing sustaining her father, and if that was what he needed, she would help him get it.
Paul spoke to Dr. Wrigley. She heard the low huskiness of his voice over the whine of the small airplane’s air circulation system. Her guilt was palpable, a live thing that slithered through her gut and into her spine until it whispered in her brain.
Her father’s vengeance meant everyone responsible for the children’s death would pay.
She shivered.
Jaden shot her a glance. “Cold?”
“Just thinking.”
He gave her a curious look as the plane banked and sliced through a storm-washed sky.
She closed her eyes and gave herself to sleep.
They’d been in the air for two hours going on a lifetime. The plane was a six-seater Cessna, and Paul could see Maddie’s chestnut hair just over the top of the seat in front of him. He couldn’t decide if he had caught the scent of her, the fragrance she always wore that reminded him of cinnamon, or if it was the cruel taunting of his memory.
Dr. Wrigley’s surreptitious glances in his direction didn’t help him relax. “What?” Paul said finally, turning to him. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’m worried.”
“About what?”
Wrigley raised an eyebrow. “Flying with an unstable, grief-blinded woman, for one.”
“She’s not unstable.”
“No? Well blaming the hospital and the both of us for the tragedy isn’t rational. She’s bought into her father’s madness. He’s had it against me since grad school.”
When you had an affair with his fiancée? Paul imagined his own wrath if someone had tried to steal Maddie from him. The pain in his gut reminded him she was not his anymore. He cleared his throat. “She’s just here to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
Wrigley’s eyes narrowed. “And the man from Heartline. Do you know him?”
Paul looked at the passenger he’d been trying to identify since they took off. “No. Maybe Maddie does.” He sighed, thinking about how much he’d lost since they’d broken up. It had been a little more than a year since the accident, two months since he’d last spoken to her, and then it was merely a strained conversation outside a lawyer’s office. She seeking a civil suit against the drunk driver who killed her nieces, and he in search of any kind of help for the same man, whom, in spite of everything, Paul loved.
His older brother, Mark, who was in prison.
Paul pushed away the ever-present pain and tried to read his book. This one was set in a submarine. The hero a rugged ex-marine who would accept no failure. Big guy, big guns, lots of good one-liners. If only things were so black and white. You wanted something, you worked hard at it and bingo: dreams came true.
He’d learned early on that, in the field of medicine, dogged determination didn’t keep damaged hearts beating. Hard work and a brilliant understanding of the human body wasn’t enough.
And sometimes love wasn’t, either. It was ironic that he could hardly look at Maddie due to the guilt, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her for a single moment. He leaned his head against the cool glass of the window and tried to refocus on the book.
After the okay from the pilot, he saw Dr. Wrigley check his emails.
“It’s from Director Stevens—‘Sorry I missed the flight. Thanks for “having a heart” and taking my place. Look forward to your report next week. Keep your eyes on that heart.’” Wrigley grimaced. “Funny guy. I thought I’d had enough of his jokes when he pawned off a meeting on me yesterday and flew the memo into my office on a paper airplane. I had better things to do than sit next to a heart all the way to Washington.”
Paul smiled at the thought of Dr. Wrigley chasing a paper airplane. He instinctively glanced at the box between them.
Keep your eyes on that heart.
If anything happened to that biomechanical miracle, it would most likely mean death for Bruce Lambert. There would be no time to procure another device, with all the red tape that had to be plowed through, and the unreliable quantity of human transplants made that option unfeasible at this late hour in Bruce’s journey.
Paul pictured the powerful man as he had been that night in the emergency room last year—scared, defiant, even through the pain.
And at the news Paul hadn’t been able to save the children?
Incalculably angry.
Paul wished that he could lose himself in anger, too, steep in the rage that would drive away darker feelings. The emotion that filled him to overflowing was guilt, wrapped in a terrible sorrow for the children.
For Bruce Lambert.
For his brother Mark.
And most of all for Maddie and what they had lost. Bruce’s rage bled into his daughter, proving to Paul that love and anger weren’t compatible. One feeling must crystallize at the top, like the unbreakable sheet of ice atop a frozen lake.
Whatever love Maddie had felt for him before the accident was frozen under the icy weight of her fury and her father’s.
He should read, take his mind off the stew of memories, but even the rollicking adventure novel didn’t stir his interest.
Paul looked out the window, taking in the rugged Cascade Mountains, snowcapped and sharp against the gray sky. The
